“hey you, Happy Birthday 🎈”

The text has sat on ‘read’ in my iMessage app for four, maybe five, hours now. I’d lost track of time since I first lied on my apartment’s cold carpet floor.

What was the proper response, if there was one? How could I condense marinated feelings into a single text, like trying to untangle webs of a spider that never stops spinning.

Bzz. Bzz.

My phone buzzed again ...

I trod past the mountains of Glasgow, searching for virtues in berry brûlée and lukewarm tea. Days I’m a passenger navigating nature and its juxtaposed architectures. Falling in love with strangers that pass me by in family-owned delis. Nights I slump over a book and read a chapter or two with a glass of whiskey in hand. Wondering if I’m someone’s stranger. When the clock resets and the moon is hi...

04/23

I could smell the cigarette smoke coming from four seats ahead of me. It was a mother and her baby; she tried rocking him to sleep but he kept crying as the train tracks buckled under us.

She must’ve seen me staring because she turned to me and gave one of those polite half-smiles you give to strangers. Maybe she wondered why I was dressed in all black.

A part of me felt bad for the kid....

A red turtle neck that fit snug enough to outline the slight definition on my shoulders. A spray of Dolce & Gabbana cologne. A gold plated wrist watch she had gotten me for my birthday last year.

My eyes cut an angle in the reflection of the mirror to find Stacy fixing her heels just outside the bathroom door. Our eyes locked for a split second.

“You know, our second date was your brother’s Ne...

She stood poised in a long velvet dress, sitting at a table in a crowded dining hall. Classical music juxtaposed with palpable chatter filled the room. Elliott treaded towards the girl, pushing through the crowd. “Excuse me. Excuse me — sorry.”

“Hey! Watch it, bonehead!” A man said. Others turned to Elliott with visible disdain as he pushed forward. The closer he got to her, however, the thicker ...

It was a world of hope — a sustainable ecosystem composed of the wonders of nature and advanced technology. In my awestruck gaze I could make out flying cars, innovative city structures, waterfalls, and trees as tall as redwoods (in relation to their surroundings, I suppose).

My wife walked in from the hotel door holding a few white towels, and I quickly closed the suitcase. “The kid at the fron...

Her words flowed dreamily with an effervescence — a dream that I’d never wish to wake from.

“I almost said ‘no’ when you asked me out, but not because I didn’t want to come, I was just — a lot’s been going on is all.”

“Oh,” I said before smiling half-heartedly.

“Oh, no— I hope that didn’t sound too mean,” she said after slowly taking a sip from her beer. “I mean, I gladly said ‘yes’ in the end....

The soup sat between my clenched knees, and I could feel the warming glass bowl simmer into the outer layer of my skin. The soup was good, though. I don’t think I’ve ever had French onion soup. Well, I don’t know what French onion soup is, for that matter. For all I know this was just a soup with onions in it, and my brain concluded it was French.

“Jeremy!” My mother yelled. “Why are you sitting...

Eyes cloudy like cigarette smoke

once as blue as the heart of the sea

Wistfully weeping in their final hour

Haunted by what could have been

The fear that meets adolescent hearts

True love that never could embark

Hands that waver under fluorescent lights

Words unsaid in the moon’s midnight

Haunted by what could have been

Blue eyes become like cigarette smoke

Too late to see past time’s ...

A panicked temper juxtaposed with the calmness of nature. The meandering stream filled the void of sound. The short shrubs filled the void of comfort. Hard rock formed to catch each heavy-footed step. But there was no animal left for his habitat to indulge.

Of all the duties one could be given, I was gifted with watching over this enclosure. Beautiful and delightfully fit with enough yards to yi...